Communities, content syndication, and commercial interests

Why do large community web sites degenerate so quickly, is it a fault of the infrastructure, or inherent in the community? Is
there a need for a license for syndicating news items and similar up to date information? Would such a scheme fracture or unify
the world of free software-oriented news and discussion sites?

Lately, I've been ranting a lot about the current state of free software
community web sites, in particular sites of the news/info/software index kind (namely those run by Andover/VA, which are now
one and the same, but I suspect the reason I rant about those in particular is mostly just that they're the biggest and most
visible). To expand, it's becoming obvious that community sites like Slashdot are breaking down a lot under their own load,
much like Usenet did a few years ago. It seems that the decay has a lot more dramatic effects on sites like Slashdot than on
Usenet, though, and this is probably because Slashdot has much less possibility to resort to what Usenet does to survive, that
is, fragment into groups while still being one system.

Why can't Slashdot do the same? One of the reasons, one suspects, is the infrastructure. The rather contorted heap of Perl
scripts that make up Slashdot are probably not the kind of code you easily make large changes to without breaking stuff, and
adding hierarchies of discussion groups like Usenet is a pretty major change. Another reason is political, though. Breaking up
the stuff on the site would most probably reduce both real and perceived traffic, which is not a good thing when you're a
recently-IPOed and then mergered new media company.

So say you're someone who wants to start a new news-with-subsequent-discussion site, and maybe you want to do something
along the lines of Slashdot, but with more clueful posts (wouldn't hurt) and a better backend. Perhaps your site will be
something like Advogato (one of the few sites that has consistently good content, and a growing, pleasant community), but on
a much larger scale. What can you do? Well, assuming that you're not yet owned by the venture capitalists, this is your moment
to perform some media subversive tricks (and hope what you accomplish won't be ruined once you do sell out)!

Here's my suggestion to what can be done:
Syndicate all the content using a license specifically designed for the purpose of cross-pollinating news sites with items. As
research for this article, I went through the available content licenses (as well as the most-used software licenses), and it
seems there are no licenses designed with this in mind, so we might need to create a new one (I'll be extremely happy if
someone can prove me right on this, I'm a real Bob's Public License skeptic). The requirements for such a license would
probably be:

Copyleft properties, with a moderate level of infectiousness. That is, it should probably infect news stories that can
reasonably be considered derivative, but shouldn't necessarily place the rest of the publisher's site under the same license.

Attribution clause. Require that the content piece is attributed to the original author, and that a link to the site of
origin is provided. This gives a "link exchange" type synergy.

Change notice. This one is a bit tricky. On one hand, the original author has a right to people knowing that this is
not her unchanged work, on the other hand, it can get pretty tiresome to have to label things clearly like this. Perhaps define a
standard format for it, so it can be made as compact as possible.

Minimum hassle. It should be legally binding (to the same level as the GPL), but should not have too much ballast
to weigh it down, so content publishers will have qualms about using it, because they don't understand all the verbiage.
Considering what some people manage to read into the GPL, for instance, this is a real concern.

What about liability? There's the matter of liability, what happens if someone posts incorrect information, and it
also turns out to be classifiable as slander, for instance? The license should specify where that responsability lies (which is
probably with the original publisher).

Now, there might also be the need to create a standard system of data interchange to go with this (such systems might exist,
my only experience with things like this is from work in the newspaper industry, where there are standards, but the old quip of
"so many to choose from" applies), but that's a technicality.

Being in the process of setting up a Free Software related content site myself, as a development project for the company I work
for, I'd personally be very interested in a license/exchange network like this. The main effect, as I see it, would be that you
could read the site you preferred, with the audience and discussions you find most interesting, but still not worry about missing
important and relevant news items. Anything from NewbieNews to GuruDot, AquaReport to Console Cronicle would be
possible, and they would all interoperate. In addition, if you wanted just the news, really fast, it's easy to set up
news tickers, do intelligent agent (w00) stuff, and generally frolic in a large stream of news items coming at you. From what I've
seen of the old media world's interchange systems, this concept could easily kick their asses when it comes to up-to-dateness,
relevance, and sheer volume.

I'm planning to work on this, also toying with the idea of setting up a discussion mailinglist, but first I'd like to see some
Advogato discussion on it. A few issues I'm very interested in hearing ideas about is how to extend the benefits of such a
system to increase the quality of the news items, that is, do fact-checking and other types of quality assurance. This is an area
old media (not as opposed to Internet media, but opposed to Slashdot-like digital tabloid media) still rules supreme in, and I'm
not so sure it needs to be that way. Also, do you think the fragmenting of the discussion would be a good or a bad thing?
Personally, I think it would bring discussions down to a managable volume (did you ever try to wade through a largish Slashdot
discussion lately, and get an overview?), and let you talk with people whose opinions you trust and respect.

In other words, let the discussion begin. I'm sure there are opinions.

I'm an editor a slashdot like site, GilDot. It's nimble sized compared to
slashdot and "limited" to the portuguese speaking community. The motto
is "news about Linux and more".
This site was rather peacefull and threads seldom exceded 10 replys,
most of which were actually valid. Life was smooth. Then one article
about irc networks wars went over 250 replies, with only about 1/10
being worth reading and the rest pure crap, personal flamewars and stuff
that eventually got deleted off the boards. Nowadays, after that
landmark, one out of three articles goes over 30 replies, with most
being anonimous flames and personal wars.
We are moving towards an account based system and moderation (newer
/. code). Something as simple as one simple and totally harmless
article triggered the snow ball. In this case it exposed us to the irc
unwashed masses. We also grew in editors, which gives us some
roblimoesque posts.
Conclusion ? All communities degenerate into slashdots unless kept in a
very fascist way.

The one exception is Advogato. I havn't seen any flames or arguments
on it. Maybe that is because it is still new, who knows. I definitly
do not consider Advogato facist, you can pretty much do what you want.
From my understanding there isn't even a block as to what articles are
posted here. Maybe it is too early to tell, but I think (knock on
wood) Advogato will over come this. No AC, so some people are more
intimidated to flame. Let's hope it stays that way :)

Before Slashdot became Slashdot, I emailed Rob Malda, Dave Whitinger (of
LinuxToday), Michael J. Hammel (of Graphics Muse) with a similar idea
about content syndication and sharing. I proposed something modeled
after a newswire-style service with content in a delivery-neutral
format such as SGML (XML wasn't a buzzword yet).

Malda and I exchanged a few emails on the topic, and we
fundamentally
disagreed. I felt that a firm separation between content and delivery
were ideal, but he felt that that wasn't necessary, because he could
provide the one source for everyone that would be totally flexible,
customizeable, and kick-ass.

Here's a snippet from one of his emails (from August '97):

See, when the centralized place appears, the
real
power
happens- people
e-mail /us/ with the stories. I now get 2-4 stories per day mailed to
me
to post on C&D. I get 750-1000 hits a day. If I get 10x more hits,
I
would have enough stories to put an 'issue' out per day. Even if I
filtered it out to 3-4 good stories.

C&D refers to the proto-slashdot, Chips & Dips.

Anyway, it seems to me that Slashdot, at least if Rob's vision
has
played out, was not meant to be syndicated, its content shared; it was
meant to be the
only place for the healthy geek to get his news. Centralization
was the goal, not the problem, of information delivery.

But, I still hold on to the idea that a shared news service could be
done. Like many people, I get daily news from a variety of sites, and I
wish there were better ways for these sites to collaborate and share
their content. This is almost purely selfish; I want sites that fit my
needs better. But not quite purely selfish: I run the GIMP News website, and I'd be
glad to contribute content to a sharing system that matches my ideals.

jdube was wondering, why Advogato did not create a flamewar fest so far.
The answer seems to be clear: Advogate has trusted users.
You cannot get in without someone supporting you. It is like an elite
club in this sense. though I believe it is reasonable here.
And you can see who supported the flamethrower if we ever get to this
temperature.

I totally agree with this article. I run kuro5hin.org, which is another in
the long list of "small, growing, pleasant to read weblogs." The
software that runs kuro5hin is called Scoop, and was also written by me.
One of my ultimate goals with scoop is to provide for *very* broad
syndication of nearly everything in the site. Stories, discussions,
submissions (that heven't even gone up on the front page yet), Users,
etc etc. Everything that can be shared, in other words. What I had in
mind is something like a network of sites that all speak a common
"content-sharing" language (probably best implemented in XML), and make
all content and discussion free for the taking (and giving).

I'm impressed that you had this idea way back when, and very very
disappointed that slashdot didn't pioneer this when it had the chance.
But, oh well. Now's our turn to do it. :-) I will help in any way I can,
with ideas and implementation. I think something like a commitee to
produce an RFP outlining the protocol (or XML DTD, or whatever) would be
a good first step. It should probably be at least backwards-compatible
with my.netscape RDF, for starters.

Rather, Advogato has users that Want trust. People
creating accounts here are providing (exposing if you will) their work
and their personal thoughts, via pointers to and/or descriptions of
their creations and online and very public diaries.

Most online "Communities" are bulletin boards and not really
Communities at all.

Anonymity is a bane and a boon. The immature and the outcast will abuse
it just like so many ACs on Slashdot. But the timid and real repressed
people need a voice and can have it, safely, with anonymous posting.

Slashdot is Slashdot. I read the headlines and rarely read the
messages. (Take the time and categorize the topic vs. the number of
posts some day. The trivial and the controversial headlines get the
highest number of posts and the important headlines get the least.)

One must react to the intent and the words, not the source, of a
message.

Advogato is an attempt at a true online community. The trust metrics
are secondary in that Advogato does not exist to generate "hits" like
Slashdot does, but exists to get people together as peers with a common
goal in mind. (Far be it from me to say what the creator (creators?) of
Advogato actually had in mind, but that is how it appears to me.)

We really do seem to enjoy meta-discussion, don't we? Next Advogato's
number will be about the economics software complexity, I promise.

First, some of the easy stuff. Yes, one of the very explicit design
goals of Advogato was to have a smallish, well-defined community. There
are currently 473 accounts on Advogato. I estimate there are about ten
times that many free software developers. The prospect of having to
scale by an order of magnitude is a bit daunting, but by comparison the
idea that I don't plan to scale by two is a huge relief.

I believe that the concept of "community" is inherently a small-scale
phenomena. I'm fond of saying that your community is roughly the set of
people you share meals with. A lot of the people on Advogato are my
friends, and I've been priveleged to share meals with quite a number of
you. Not everybody, of course, but we're not completely out of whack,
either. I feel like I know lots more people who I've never actually met
in person. A lot of these are people I look forward to meeting
(Guadec!).

Now, if you know a group of people pretty well (and they know you),
you're not going to post crap. In a large scale system, you can't
know everybody, not even close, so I think it starts to become
inevitable that you get breakdowns of "community norms."

Absolutely, Advogato differs from "media" sites in its purpose. It is
indeed to bring a group of people closer together, not to generate hits.
I am thrilled with the almost 500 users and the half-dozen or so that
join each day, but these stats are piddling compared with a real media
site. I have the luxury of being able to say, "I want this site to stay
small." If you're making money off a site, you really don't have that
choice.

So what Radagast proposes is very intriguing to me. Instead of having
huge megasites, why not a federation of small, thriving communities. And
the Internet gives us the possibility of flow between these sites - they
do not have to be isolated islands. Content syndication is a powerful
tool in this quest, I think.

I also very much like the idea of a clear license that fosters the flow
of this content, but at the same time protects it from being exploited
by big companies. We need to do some thinking about the way this
syndication works and how deeply it goes into the site. For example, the
toplevel story links exported from Advogato are now available as a
Slashbox on Slashdot. I'm pretty sure nobody has a problem with that.
But if they started repackaging people's diary entries and selling ad
banners over them, I can imagine there would be some resistance. Both
types of content are easily accessible from Advogato through XML
syndication.

On anonymity. ralsina has a point that anonymity is relatively less
important for discussions of free software. After all, a major part of
our culture is to share code, ideas, and thoughts freely. That said, I'm
a pretty big supporter of anonymity (in fact, my first free software
project was a client for anonymous remailers). For some areas of
discussion, you really do want to make it possible for people to present
their ideas without opening themselves up publicly to attack. Dissenting
from the drug war, holding unconventional ideas about sex, questioning
Scien^H^H^H^H^Hpowerful religions. And I'd think that these topics come
up in free software too. As RMS pointed out in his Linux Expo Paris
talk, in China the "free speech, free beer" analogy used to explain free
software has very different resonances than it does for us in the West.

I think that when communication systems start breaking down, people
abusing the system often use anonymity. On the flip side, I think it is
the responsibility of a healthy forum to tolerate words and ideas from
those who wish to remain anonymous. The issue hasn't really come up in
Advogato yet, but when it does, I will be supporting the anonymity
pretty strongly.

Lastly. One of the persistently hard parts of distributed communications
systems is trying to filter out the good bits from all the crap. People
have tried lots of systems, of which Slashdot moderation is only a more
recent incarnation (anyone remember strn scorefiles?). For reasons that
are difficult to figure out, these things haven't worked too well.

One of the problems is that individual posts in a thread do not have
levels of quality that are fully independent. Most significantly, the
context counts. Let's say you have a thread of which some of the posts
are moderated above threshold and others below. You might not even be
able to understand what's being talked about. Also, take a common
pattern on Slashdot - Roblimo posts a story that is totally wrongheaded
and full of factual errors. People immediately jump on the story
pointing out the errors, but most of them still don't quite get it, or
get it wrong in a different way. Finally, a few knowledgeable people set
the record straight, but only after lots of energy has been expended
bickering. Is simply filtering out the moderated-up bits of the thread
the best solution? I doubt it.

I notice that kuro5hin has a link to this story, with their own
discussion. The two discussions are now tied together through the
magic of HTML linking. Should there be a tighter integration of some
kind, perhaps implemented through XML syndication? I'm not sure.

So I think there are lots of interesting ideas here. I think that by
working in noncommercial space, we can do interesting things, like
communities that remain manageably small, that the bigger media sites
can't. I'm eager to see what happens, and certainly willing to let
Advogato be part of this effort.

If we are to have an archipelago (advopelago?) of small interlinked
community sites, it would be useful not to have to sign up for each.
Having a single identity for member sites would also make it easier to
search for posts based on the author. I know there are a lot of folks
here whose occasional /. posts I would like to read, but I am unlikely
to wade through the muck to find them all.

Certification schemes could remain seperate between sites. There was some discussion here
on how to define different certification domains for different areas of
expertise; it seems a fairly natural way would be to
allow different sites to certify the community they cater to.

Of course, the legalese to keep identities from being abused by
participating sites would have to be drawn up carefully; certainly there
is potential here for a lot more mischief than banner ads on diary
entries.

On the subject of anonymity, I recently read The Transparent
Society by David Brin. It makes a coherent argument for
transparency of identity, better than I could with this little sleep.

The responses here have been very positive, and the discussion interesting, as always. I've gotten the main confirmation I
wanted, which is that people think this is a good idea, and also that there are existing sites out there who would consider
joining such a network.

So I'm officially taking on the task of setting up something like this. That is, I plan to set up a mailing list for discussing the
issues at hand, and then try to evolve that into a site which can act as a news hub. I've run this by people here at work,
and it seems I've got a go on spending resources and time on it without commercializing it, but there are several matters that
need discussing before we can even start implementing anything. Namely:

The details of the license. We need to work from the basic things mentioned above, and end up on an actual
license text. I agree with Raph's concern that someone might take the content and plce lots of banner ads on it, but on the
other hand, I know that banners is one of the few ways young sites can make money, and in a lot of cases this is necessary for
them to be able to put down the work at all. This needs to be sorted out to everyone's satisfaction. I toyed with the idea of
letting the info supplier specify if advertising was allowed on this info or not, but that would quickly create two classes of sites,
and consolidation is what we're looking for, after all.

What can be syndicated/consolidated? When I wrote the article, I was thinking solely about news item syndication.
From
comments here and on Kuro5hin, it's clear that several people would want to take it a little further, consolidating
logins/accounts, discussions, and a lot more. I think there are interesting concepts here, for instance if we had consolidated
logins (optional, and separate from the news item syndication as such, of course) we could have distributed trust metrics too,
for those sites that choose to use them. These issues should be discussed. Do we want to try this? Who wants it? How is it
done, technically?

How should things be implemented? There are a lot of technicalities to be sorted out, and we should try to get as
open a solution as possible. Implementation discussions will be welcome.

How to do the quality control/fact checking? This is an issue I brought up in the original article, and I've had some
more time to think about it. Probably, we should have a trust metric between editors (an editor is the person that chooses which
items from his site to send out over the wire, and also selects which items from the wire to put on his site). This creates a
community of sorts between the editors (I think the hub site for the services should serve as a discussion forum between web
site owners as well, I don't think that's been done before), and that community will be reasonably small and exclusive, thus
making the trust metric work, and the feeling of responsibility, as referred to in Raph's post, will be strongly present. In addition,
for the fact checking, the DTD (assuming we use XML for interchange, which I think we will) should have elements for
specifying sources/fact checking resources in the form of URLs, email addresses, phone numbers, etc., so that editors of other
sites can verify before posting. There should also be a feedback mechanism so you can quickly tell the other sites "This story
has been denied, it's probably incorrect" and the like.

There are probably a lot of other issues that need to be sorted out as well, and I expect the discussion on the upcoming
mailing
list to be lively. But I think we can make something great here, it could be true grassroots news publishing, and on a
longer term, I don't see it limited to only technical news either. I'll make sure to let the Advogato community know when the list
is up (probably this coming weekend), and hope to see you all there. In the meantime, feel free to discuss more here, of
course.

I propose the name "The Cluedot Federation" for this project. If it is
acceptable to others, I am happy to donate the cluedot domain name,
which I just happen to own.

I also wanted to speak a little more on anonymity. In the cypherpunk
community, there is a distinction between anonymity (no identity of any
kind), and pseudonymity (a constructed identity). A pseudonym is a
persistent identity, and is capable of participating in two-way
conversations.

A completely separate axis is how well protected is the actual identity
of the person behind the "nym". This ranges from "a hotmail address" to
some fairly sophisticated cryptography. Right now, you can do the latter
using arcane, difficult to use tools, but Zero Knowledge Systems is in
the process of bringing this capability to a broad audience in their Freedom service.

When I say I support anonymity, I'm really talking about pseudonyms.
You'll note that completely anonymous posting is impossible on Advogato,
by design. On the other hand, if someone creates a nym and convinces
others that she has something worth saying, that nym can get certified
just as easily as a real person. A few pieces of free software have in
fact been written by nyms, for example the "lucre" implementation of
(heavily patented) digital cash protocols. I think that nyms of this
caliber could have a lot to contribute to Advogato, and hope they would
be welcomed.

When I say I strongly support anonymity, I mean that I don't care much
how traceable the nym is to a real identity. Indeed, if a person is
being persecuted for their beliefs, I can see a lot of value in this
identity not being traceable.

Lastly, on the subject of the license. To me, the relevant concept is
quid pro quo. I think any site should be able to syndicate our
content if we, in turn, have the right to syndicate theirs. I think this
concept captures the sense of fairness we're striving for without
placing specific restrictions on banner ads or whatnot. With luck, we
should be able to work with a lawyer to turn this concept into a
workable license.

After talking to Raph a little, we settled on "Peer Press Federation" as a name for this concept/site/organization/thingy. I've set
up a mailing list, and grabbed the relevant domains. The mailing list can be subscribed to at http://lists.styx.net/mailman/listinfo/peerpress-main

I urge everyone interested in the topic, whether or not you run a site yourself, to join the list and participate in the discussion.
I'd like to hear from writers in particular, since I noticed some skepticism (of the "how can
programmers^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hwriters put food on the table" variety) from people involved in writing who posted to
the discussion over at Kuro5hin.

Well, as one of the guys who is paid to work on the contorted heap of
Perl scripts that make up Slashdot, let me tell you that technically it
is not that hard to make changes to fit what you want. It is simply that
the people who make the decisions on what Slashdot should be disagree
with you about how it should work.

I can't speak for them, but I can say that my opinion on the
matter is
basically, "if you want Usenet, you know where to find it." I see little
reason to use sites like Slashdot if you like Usenet.

And your logic about the commercial interests is not tracable. If
doing as you suggest would cause Slashdot to expand, then why would
traffic decrease? You're right, it is all about eyeballs. Traffic is
what matters. But Andover.Net follows the simple maxim that doing what
is best for the users is what gets and keeps traffic.

Oh, and VA and Andover.Net are most certainly not the same thing.
Probably in a couple of months or so they will be, but they currently are
not.

Anyway, this topic also attracts my attention because I am
starting a
news discussion site for Perl, an extension of the Perl News site. I have some thoughts and wanted to
see yours. You make some good points, but you poison them from the start
by attacking the Slash backend. The Slash backend does what it is
supposed to do, and it is not difficult to modify it to do other things.
But I'll move on from that point now.

On the aforementioned Perl News site, I have a very simple license
for
the content. You can use any of it if your site is not for profit (don't
even get me started on copyleft of content!), and if not, you can just
post the headlines with links back to the Perl News site. If you post
the content, you must post full attribution including copyright notice
and a link back to the Perl News site. I don't care to include anything
else in the license, as I don't think it is necessary. I am clearly not
liable for something I don't do (which is publishing something on someone
else's site), and a notice that I am not liable for that wouldn't change
that fact either way, nor prevent lawsuits. Same thing with the change
notification; if you attribute something to me, and it has been
substantially changed, then you are lying and misrepresenting me, and
whether or not that is actionable wouldn't be changed much with a notice
in the license.

On anonymity: on my proposed Slash site for Perl, there will be no
anonymous cowards. I want it to be more open than Advogato, but because
you cannot register without a working email address (that is how you
initially get your password), we have some control over serious trolls;
we can shut off their active accounts if necessary, and they cannot just
go create new ones very easily. That is, they can get around it by
creating new accounts to post under, but we have the means to shut them
down if we really feel the need to. I expect we would rarely do
something like that.

Also, Slash has protected "pseudonymity." You can be known only
as a
user name with a fakeemail address (it is field in the user DB, separate
from the realemail address).

And lastly, on RSS: RSS is indeed a great tool that needs to be
expanded. The author of XML::RSS was trying to get people together to
discuss how this is to be done.

I realize that Slashdot people very probably don't want to do what I propose here. It would offer no immediate, and dubious
long-term, benefits when compared with where they are now.

The comparison with Usenet is a bit shallow. You might as well say "If you want Associated Press, you know where to find it",
and you'd be as accurate. The main idea of Peer Press is a
little of both, with most of it completely optional. The idea of syndicating content and distributing news items in a coherent
manner is a lot more interesting than Usenet, though. For instance, a significant amount of stories on Slashdot are actually
stories that are posted on other, smaller news sites. That means that before it can show up on Slashdot, it has to go from that
original site to a reader with enough incentive to submit it as a story to Slashdot, and then it goes through the review process
there, and if it passes, it goes up on the site. With Peer Press, the whole process could ideally be automated, using trust
metrics on the news sources combined with keyword filtering. If you don't want it fully automatic, that's ok, it's still a lot easier,
all you need to do is look at the item as it comes in, and click on the little "Accept" button.

Traffic is indeed what matters to commercial sites. I remember when Slashdot wasn't a commercial site, though, and it was run
as a labour of love. I used to like it a lot more back then. Of course Andover.net feel that whatever is best for the users is what
gets and keeps traffic. However, it's necessarily a "one size fits all", or at best a "these are the available sizes" approach, where
you get limited ability to customize your experience. In addition, the centralized nature of Slashdot has a lot of drawbacks, most
noticably the fact that it's frequently not available at all because the connection and/or servers are swamped.

It's understandable that you feel a bit protective about the Slash system. I haven't looked carefully at it, though, and I must say
that my main criticism wasn't towards Slash (although I heard that it at least used to be pretty crufted together), but towards the
culture and community around Slashdot, and how that relates to technical issues. In other words, more the design decisions
than the quality of code.

As for licenses, there are a lot of things that are prohibited by law, but still best regulated by licenses. For instance, even
though posting a modified article with your name still on it strictly speaking is misrepresentation, you bet it's a lot harder to
convince a court of that case (as I understand, in most countries you would need to prove that the misrepresentation caused
you damages) than of the case that a license stating "Absolutely no modifications to the wording without a change notice" has
been broken. You see the point, I'm sure. As for copyleft, I think it's entirely reasonable, and a lot more reasonable than your
"not for profit" scheme (how do you define profit? Run by a company? Banner ads? How about if the creator profits from the
site indirectly, by being part of a larger network of sites?), and as long as the level and limit of infectiousness is reasonable, the
usual criticisms against copylefts should not apply.

RSS is pretty good, but it's mostly made for syndicating headlines (as is RDF). This is one of the discussion topics on the mailing list at the moment, actually. I invite you to join, it's surely
going to be rewarding to have more people with actual (and large-scale) site experience participating in the discussion.

I realize that Slashdot people very probably don't want to do what I propose here. It would offer no immediate, and dubious
long-term, benefits when compared with where they are now.

The comparison with Usenet is a bit shallow. You might as well say "If you want Associated Press, you know where to find it",
and you'd be as accurate. The main idea of Peer Press is a
little of both, with most of it completely optional. The idea of syndicating content and distributing news items in a coherent
manner is a lot more interesting than Usenet, though. For instance, a significant amount of stories on Slashdot are actually
stories that are posted on other, smaller news sites. That means that before it can show up on Slashdot, it has to go from that
original site to a reader with enough incentive to submit it as a story to Slashdot, and then it goes through the review process
there, and if it passes, it goes up on the site. With Peer Press, the whole process could ideally be automated, using trust
metrics on the news sources combined with keyword filtering. If you don't want it fully automatic, that's ok, it's still a lot easier,
all you need to do is look at the item as it comes in, and click on the little "Accept" button.

Traffic is indeed what matters to commercial sites. I remember when Slashdot wasn't a commercial site, though, and it was run
as a labour of love. I used to like it a lot more back then. Of course Andover.net feel that whatever is best for the users is what
gets and keeps traffic. However, it's necessarily a "one size fits all", or at best a "these are the available sizes" approach, where
you get limited ability to customize your experience. In addition, the centralized nature of Slashdot has a lot of drawbacks, most
noticably the fact that it's frequently not available at all because the connection and/or servers are swamped.

It's understandable that you feel a bit protective about the Slash system. I haven't looked carefully at it, though, and I must say
that my main criticism wasn't towards Slash (although I heard that it at least used to be pretty crufted together), but towards the
culture and community around Slashdot, and how that relates to technical issues. In other words, more the design decisions
than the quality of code.

As for licenses, there are a lot of things that are prohibited by law, but still best regulated by licenses. For instance, even
though posting a modified article with your name still on it strictly speaking is misrepresentation, you bet it's a lot harder to
convince a court of that case (as I understand, in most countries you would need to prove that the misrepresentation caused
you damages) than of the case that a license stating "Absolutely no modifications to the wording without a change notice" has
been broken. You see the point, I'm sure. As for copyleft, I think it's entirely reasonable, and a lot more reasonable than your
"not for profit" scheme (how do you define profit? Run by a company? Banner ads? How about if the creator profits from the
site indirectly, by being part of a larger network of sites?), and as long as the level and limit of infectiousness is reasonable, the
usual criticisms against copylefts should not apply.

RSS is pretty good, but it's mostly made for syndicating headlines (as is RDF). This is one of the discussion topics on the mailing list at the moment, actually. I invite you to join, it's surely
going to be rewarding to have more people with actual (and large-scale) site experience participating in the discussion.

My comparison with Usenet is not so much that we cannot borrow
ideas
from it, but you seemed to be saying that Usenet is this wonderful thing,
and Usenet seems to do what you want, so why not just use Usenet? Perhaps
I read too much into your comparison of the two.

As to automatically posting stories, that is a good idea, and one
that we've discussed before and may be implemented in Slash (though
perhaps not used in Slashdot itself).

I don't understand your comparison to Slashdot pre-Andover and
post-
Andover. I see precious little difference, except that it performs
better now, thanks to Andover hardware.

I am not so much protective as I want to quell misstatements
about
it, such as the attacks on the code which are so pervasive around the Net
these days. People say it is slow, "contorted," not flexible ... it just
isn't the case. I get a lot of garbage from people about PHP and Python
and Java being "better" in some way. It's simply false. We use Perl
because we like it better. They use what they want to because they like
it better. Slash in Perl is just as fast (though it does take more
memory than the others, for the most part) or faster than the others. And
while the code has been crufty, it is much cleaned up now (go to Slashcode and grab the 0.9.3 release if you
don't believe me). It is even running under -w and use strict!

I understand you were talking primarily about the culture, and I
agree. When I start community sites based on the Slash code (or perhaps
some other code), I will work hard to make the culture very different
from Slashdot.

I want belabor the point about misrepresentation. I just don't
see
it as a problem. If you think it is, you can always use the Artistic
License, which protects against it. As to not-for-profit, there is
absolutely no confusion on the issue. If you are an individual and make
profit from the site, you are for profit. If you are a company that is
not a legal NFP entity, then you are for profit. And if you don't like
this scheme, I think the OpenContent License is superior to copyleft,
which I think is just silly. I won't discuss this further, I'll just
state my brief opinion: I think it is unreasonable to be infectious,
period. Either it is free, or it is not. For me, this goes for code and
for content.

RSS is better for headlines; but the basic data model (simply
RDF) is not. RSS can easily be expanded.

I think, rather than using a standard NNTP server, making an NNTP interface layer is really easy to do. That way, the
discussions can work on the web, over NNTP, as mailing lists, and over new, upcoming discussions systems (one of which it so
happens the company I work in is working on).

I agree about web interfaces to discussions generally being quite bad, though. That they are still quite successful is a fact I
attribute more to people's unstoppable desire to discuss stuff than to the functionality of the interface.

Just wanted to comment on the discussion about copyleft above. It seems there's some misconception here. Copyleft means a
license that a) doesn't allow the thing licensed under it to be relicensed under a different license without the author's concent,
and b) requires that derivative works also use the same license (infectious). Just to clear that up. Noone was saying "your entire
web site and all content has to go under the license for you to even think about or mention material under it" or some such
nonsense.

An NNTP gateway to Slash is planned. There is one already, we may just
modify it some (I haven't seen it yet).

I realize what you were saying about copyleft. I know what it means.
And I don't like it. Free is free. Infectiousness is not. If you
disagree, fine, I don't think anyone wants YA license war. We'll just
agree to disagree.

If you understand the term copyleft like this, I don't see the point of your "I think the OpenContent License is superior
to copyleft, which I think is just silly", since the OpenContent licenses are copylefts under this definition (point 2 of the open
content license, point III of the open publication license (although the OPL
isn't quite as strongly infectious).

I don't really want to discuss licenses either, it's a pointless exercise. I do know that all the site publishers, writers, and other
involved people I've talked to here, in private mail, or on the Peer
Press mailing list prefer a copyleft license that covers derivative works.

Now, I might be wrong, but the things you say above reek of the kind of mindless dumping on anything associated with the FSF
which we've been seeing way too much of lately. If so, please reconsider.

Looking at Slashdot as an example of a community-oriented news site is
simply wrong. Slashdot is not about community at all; hasn't
been in quite a while (and may well never have been). Slashdot is about
one thing: making money. They do what makes them the most money. What
makes them money? Page views. It's in Slashdot's interest to have as
many comments as possible and as many people reading and writing those
comments as they can get. Flame wars make money for Slashdot.
Why would they want to stop them?

Slashdot's not going to foster a community unless fostering a
community
helps them make money, and history has shown that it doesn't seem to
really help. The possibility that Slashdot could effectively foster a
community ended when it became a commercial venture. At that moment the
community (if there ever was one) ceased to be the first priority.

Not that we can blame Slashdot for this. They are, after all, a
business, beholden to their shareholders to produce a profit above all
else. If you want someone who is NOT going to put profit above
principle, don't turn to a business. A business that puts principle
ahead of profit is a business headed for bankruptcy.

I'm not trying to say that Slashdot is bad. (It would be better if
they
exercised a bit more competent editorial control over staff-provided
content and actually acted with some semblance of journalistic
integrity, but they have no reason to do so because they have no
competition to speak of. But that's neither here nor there.) It's just
not in any way capable of building a community. If you want to try to
use a web site as a means to foster community, I think it is absolutely
essential that you go in with the permanent intention of doing it
only for that purpose. If the notion that you might ever make
money off of it even enters the picture, you're doomed to failure (even
though you might someday get rich).

The OCL does not allow commercial redistribution. So it is not even a
free license, according to RMS. :)

The OPL allows restrictions on redistribution of substantive
modifications and commercial redistribution (see part VI), so is not
copyleft. Although, I suppose, those need to be specifically stated in
order to be in effect, so it can be a copyleft license.

Regardless, the OCL is the one I was referring to, and I suppose from the
perspective of redistribution for non-commercial purposes, it is
somewhat copyleft. I say "somewhat" because it has allowances for
Fair Use, which can pretty much circumvent the copyleft anyway.

Anyway, back to the main point: if I say anyone can use my copyrighted
material, and Joe Schmoe takes it, then Jane Schmuck can use Joe Schmoe's
copy. I still own the copyright on Joe's work, even if he makes
modifications, and Jane can use Joe's under the same terms I made the
original release under. It is only when those modifications become
significant that Joe can claim his own copyright.

In other words, I think copyleft is only meaningful when it becomes
infectious. To say non-infectious copyleft is just to say that the
original copyright remains in effect, which is already the case. So that
is what I meant when I said copyleft is silly; I meant that non-
infectious copyleft is silly.

Of course, you did not mean non-infectious, but moderately infectious; it
would infect derivative stories, but not the site. But what is
derivative? I realize what you are saying: if Joe makes significant
changes to my content but it is still originally my story, then the
entire story is still covered by my licensing of it. But this is how
articles are done all the time. Take a paragraph from here and some
facts from over there. "Reasonably considered to be derivative," in my
opinion, ignores the concept of fair use and the reality of how articles
are written (the OCL touches on fair use, by the way).

Maybe I am reading too much into what you meant when you said "reasonably
considered to be derivative," though. Maybe you were not including Fair
Use. I just know from my years in journalism that half the stories of
significance in the newspaper and on TV are derivative of others. Where
do you draw the line?

I prefer to simply say "anyone can use my content for not-for-profit
purposes, with a link back to my original content" and let people do what
they will from there. What is the worst that can happen if there is no
copyleft enforced? Maybe some Joe will add a bunch of stuff to one of my
articles and not redistribute it under similar terms, but will link back
to my original content. Well, Jane can come along, take my original
content, and then take all of his facts and use them under Fair Use laws.
No one loses, that I can see.

I don't want to flame here, so I will keep it short. To state factually
that Slashdot is not about community but about money is plain wrong. I
suppose it is most realistic to say it is about both.

You write "Slashdot's not going to foster a community unless fostering a
community helps them make money." I counter that with the idea that
Slashdot won't make money unless it fosters a community. You assume
there is no community there. I think that they have a community is self-
evident. You say that no community can exist because it is a commercial
venture. I say it cannot be a successful commercial venture without
community.

It may not be a community you are happy with or like or identify with --
I know I don't spend much time there in the "community" -- but there is a
community, and the people who run Slashdot (Rob etc.) wouldn't do it for
much longer if they weren't happy with it. They can do pretty much
anything they want; why continue with something they don't like that
much?

While you don't like all of what happens over at Slashdot, the people who
use Slashdot and run its content apparently do.

Pudge misses my point, I believe. My point is that a business cannot be
committed to a community because all businesses are irrevocably
committed to making money. If Slashdot truly is about community, then
its management is in breach of its fiduciary duty to ensure profit for
the business' owners, and should be terminated. Should I sue? As a VA
Linux shareholder, I have standing, or at least will once the merger is
complete. The first duty of every business is to its owners.
Customers are secondary. (If what you say about Rob is true, he should
be fired.)

I don't deny that at the moment it is probably the case that fostering
community benefits Slashdot financially. The moment the community
ceases to be financially helpful, Slashdot is legally required to
abandon it. Why put your community in the hands of someone who is
legally bound to protect its interests?

You assert that committments to money and community are mutually
exclusive, but you do not prove it. I assert that is nonsense.

You wrote: The moment the community ceases to be financially helpful,
Slashdot is legally required to abandon it.

That is simply false. Companies, including publically held ones, can do
activities that do not make profits but help communities. There is no
legal obligation for every activity in a company to be profitable, or
even intended for profit. The company as a whole is required to try to
make a profit, but that does not descend down to every activity it
engages in. If nothing else, that would make most corporate charity
(where they give it, not where they get it :) impossible.

But this all misses the point: Slashdot _cannot be_ financially viable
without community, or else it ceases to be Slashdot. To say they are not
committed to community is to say they are not committed to profit (though
the reverse is not necessarily true).

Actually, in most states (I have a case in front of me from New Jersey)
a corporation may only make a charitable contribution when doing so
"will contribute to the protection of the corporate interests."
Corporations can't just give money to charities because they want to;
the decision must be grounded in some reasonable belief that the gift
will in some way reflect back on the corporation's interests. The same
case (A.P. Smith Mfg. Co. v. Barlow, 13 N.J. 145, 98 A.2d 581
(1953)) suggests that if a donation is made purely for the personal
reasons of the directors, or was excessive, it would be improper and a
breach of fiduciary duty.

In practice, because of what is known as the "business judgment
rule",
the courts will not second-guess whether a decision which appears to
have been made for business purposes was made wisely. But it remains
the law that a corporation may never ignore its prime purpose of
producing profit. Every corporate act must in some way serve
that goal (although not necessarily on any given time scale).

But you did not phrase it this way. You said it must be "financially
helpful," which is not the same as the very nebulus standard of "will
contribute to the protection of the corporate interests." Semantics,
perhaps, but I did not think you meant the latter when you stated the
former.

In any event, back to the meta-topic at hand: let us assume Slashdot made
no money as a community (which may not be reasonable, since the very fact
that it has community means you can sell banner ads, which makes money;
in the web business, eyeballs are currency). Andover.Net could claim
simply that the goodwill it gets by funding Slashdot's infrastructure
provides goodwill to the community. They may cease funding its
development but continue to host it.

But this is all based, again, on the false assumption that Slashdot can
be financially successful without its community.

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